


Anything to Thin the Blood

by etherati



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood and Gore, Ensemble Cast, Graphic Description, Minutemen, Multi, Survival, Temporary Character Death, Violence, because it's what I dooooo, maybe some other characters too but I don't want to be spoilery, not as depressing as it sounds, zombies of course
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:31:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And who'd have thought tomorrow could be so strange?"  At the end of the world, survival is easy--anyone can survive. Not everyone WILL, but anyone can. The trick is making survival mean something, and understanding how much the dead have to teach us about living--why we do it, what we get out of it, and what allows us to cling to it so desperately against all odds. Plus, I mean, gross zombies running around trying to not be gross zombies is super adorable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally just a prompt on Tumblr, asking for Minutemen zombie fic. No one was content with the one-shot I posted (here re-purposed as chapter 1), so I wrote more. This is not a super serious fic and I update it when I get inspired. Usually short chapters, sorry.

*

"Aw, _hell_."

It'd been bad at first—bad like they'd all known it would be, the way they could all taste it in the backs of their throats in the moment before someone—Hollis doesn't remember who, later—threw the latch and shoved the double doors open and out. It'd taken shoving, too; the mass of clawing, murderous bodies piled against it had seen to that.

"Damn it—hold him, Bill!"

It'd needed to be done. They'd agreed to a man—and a woman too, the first thing Hollis thinks he's seen Sal and Ursula agree on in the last three years—that if they chose this moment to abandon the people they've spent years protecting, well, then they never deserved to wear the masks in the first place. People were _dying;_ this hadn't been the time to quibble. Even Eddie had been on board, though by god the brat had taken some convincing, and if Hollis has to hear him complain one more ti—

"This is what you get," Eddie snarls from somewhere off to the left, and Hollis has both his hands in poor Byron's gut, up to his elbows in blood just trying to keep his insides inside where they belong, and well. Eddie should count himself lucky. "I told you idiots, this is where not lookin' out for yourself gets you."

"If you don't shut up—"

Bill looks goddamned furious under his mask, the kind of fury that doesn't really know itself, is too tangled up in grief and incomprehension. He doesn't say a word, even when Byron lurches up off of the table, thrashing against his hands and snarling. His mask is gone, his antennas sheared off and the stupid fabric wings hanging off by a thread. The veins at his temples stand out, blue and thick. He seems to want a piece of someone—anyone. "Hold him down, god damn it!"

"Doesn't matter," Bill mutters, and his mask is half gone, too. There's more red in his costume than there used to be.

"Yes, it does."

"We were too late," he says, and the words have an edge of catatonic hysteria. "I was too late. We can't fix this."

Hollis eyes the way Bill's hands are loosening in their grip, casts a worried look to Sal, by the door. She's got a shotgun propped against one shoulder, liberated from some ransacked shop, and she nods to him, all frivolity of her showy public persona evaporated.

"Look at me," Hollis says, and Bill does. Under their hands, the body thrashes. "This isn't our fault, and it isn't your fault. I know where you are, and I've been there, but we need you _here_ instead. Are you here?"

Bill's gaze drops to where his friend is frothing beneath them, is struggling like murder. He nods.

"We might not be able to fix this," Hollis says. "But by god we will try our best."

"Okay," Bill says. "Okay."

"Cap'n?" Hollis calls across the room.

Nelson straightens against the wall, posture all numb shock. "Yes?"

"We need rope. As much of it as you have. I know you've got plenty, so don't hold out on us now."

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

It takes a lot of rope.

At first, they’re worried about his injuries, the amount of blood he’s lost. Most of them can’t even be sutured—just broad swaths of exposed muscle where the skin’s been ripped away, across one cheekbone, down one side of his neck, on the back of one hand and forearm. Defensive wounds. They put a few stitches into the gash running down through his right eye, but the eye itself seems ruined, and it’s really the cavernous wound in his gut that they fear will be the death of him—never mind the fact that his throat’s been ripped out, _jesus_.

Once they have him restrained well enough to check his vitals without losing fingers, it’s pretty obvious that, well, that’s already happened. 

(When Bill and Ursula had dragged him in, fighting and snarling, it’s all Bill had been able to say: _he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead._ ) 

The bleeding has stopped; the blood gels on his skin, taut over the wounds like drumskin. It’s not something they can call healing, really. Bereft of pulse or breath, he still fights like his heart’s in it, still howls and screams. The fever is eating him up.

They take his care in shifts, but some of them are more _present_ than others. Eddie loiters around the edges uselessly, a steady stream of vitriolic commentary, refusing to come anywhere near any of them; they’re all compromised, contaminated, and he’s been chain-smoking cigars like the blue-grey cloud is a ward against them. Nelson’s too eaten up with fear over Justice’s continued absence to be much help, and Bill’s catatonic with sorrow, utterly convinced that everything they’re doing is in vain.

Hollis isn’t so sure he disagrees.

Sal has been an angel about the whole thing, keeping her head like a pro while the rest of them fell apart and doing her best to help, but she’s not hands-on and the bulk of the actual brow-mopping and painkillers and antibiotic administration—maybe pointless, maybe not—has fallen on Hollis and Ursula. 

Hollis wrings out a wet rag, lays it across Byron’s forehead. He’s quiet, now; he’s worn himself out again, and these respites in his struggling are the only time they can really try to help him.

Outside the reinforced windows, a jungle-wild howl of rage and misery. Byron whines in response, all of his strength sapped.

“This isn’t going to end well,” Ursula says, across the table, rolling a bottle of morphine between her fingers. She sounds just as drained. “Is it?”

Hollis takes a long breath, lets it out. Under the rag in his hand, Byron’s head lolls woodenly from side to side, single milky eye searching. “Probably not, no. But stranger things have happened.”

“So we try. And keep trying.”

“For Bill’s sake if no-one else’s, yeah.”

“I’m not sure that false hope has ever helped anyone,” she says, quiet, and she’s probably right.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

Hollis can hear the voice on the edge of his consciousness long before he surfaces enough to make out what it’s saying. It’s just encouraging noise, praise and reassurance like he might lavish on Phantom, fully aware the old girl doesn’t understand a word he’s saying. 

She’s around here, somewhere. Basement maybe; the loud noises of other, aggressive animals have always driven her to ground. 

“...okay. It’ll be okay. Just have to hang on for us... just a little longer... oh god, By.”

His eyes slit open carefully. He’d fallen asleep on the job, obviously, but there hasn’t been much that’s needed doing. They’re out of penicillin and the morphine shouldn’t wear off for another few hours, and the armchair he’d dragged over alongside the makeshift operating table had been awfully comfortable. He is, despite common opinion, only human.

“This isn’t fair, is it?” the voice continues on, wobbling and listing left and right. “This isn’t what was supposed to...”

“Bill,” Hollis says, because that’s who it is, braced over the table on one hand, the other combing back through Byron’s sweat-and-blood-soaked hair. The body on the table is unresponsive, passed out. Bill’s out of costume—they all are, obviously—but there’s still something of the innocent all-American golden boy about him in the terribly visible way his heart is breaking.

“How is he?” Bill forces out, a breathy wheeze.

Hollis pushes himself more upright in the armchair. The chair opposite the table is empty; Ursula must have gone off to get some actual sleep. Smart lady. “Mostly the same. Out cold now, but that comes and goes. Not getting worse, anyway.”

“That’s... is that good? I guess that’s good.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

A slow blink, and Hollis has never seen anyone looking so lost. “Should I be?”

“I’d question your sanity if you were.”

A sharp bark of laughter, and nothing is funny. 

Hollis watches him for a moment, propped there unsteadily, then gets up from the chair—goes to where the other one is and drags it around to the same side as his own. “Sit down with me here, for a minute?” he says, and then: “Before you fall over?”

He does, after however long it takes him to process the request. They sit in silence for a long moment, watching their teammate not breathe; watching him lie there in state, and only the heat pouring off of him tells them that he’s not gone.

“Bill,” Hollis says, because it’s a syllable he can put between himself and what he has to say next. 

“Mm?”

“...we should have a talk.”

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

God damn it but this is hard.

“I’m not saying we’re giving up. I’m willing to keep trying for as long as we can, until he’s either better, or...”

“Or dead.”

“Bill,” Hollis says again, careful, “he’s been dead since you and Ursula brought him in here. You do understand that, right?”

Bill scrubs his hands up his face, digging fingers in hard. “Kind of. I’m still having trouble getting my head around all of this. I know he died, I was _there_ , but...”

“It’s... pretty complicated.”

“Too complicated for a dumb farm boy like me.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“No,” Bill says, lifting his eyes above the line of his hands. They’re red-rimmed, hollow. “It’s actually really simple, isn’t it? He’s like them. Outside.”

Hollis doesn’t respond for a while; he picks at the seam on one arm of the chair just for something to do with his hands. There’s a thread hanging free, and when he pulls on it the seam starts unravelling, all the pressure of stuffing inside pushing out on it, making it bulge. 

He sighs, pushing the stuffing back in with his thumb. “I know you two are close. I just don’t want you unprepared for what might happen, here.”

“He’s the best friend I’ve ever had. God, that sounds so stupid.”

“Not from where I’m sitting.”

“Just these... cliche things, like, how could he do this? How can this be happening? I keep trying to wake up, like an idiot, like if I just keep trying...”

He trails off, thick hands masking his face completely. He’s been shaking, just a slight, constant baseline shudder, for the last thirty-two hours. Hollis isn’t sure he’s aware of it. It makes him think, suddenly, of Nicky Bukowski from work, the day he’d found out his wife Marcia had drowned. It’s that same terrifying depth of sorrow. 

And they all _know_ , even if he’s never said— 

“Go ahead and tell me if this is out of line,” Hollis says, teasing at the thread again. “Because it probably is. But were you two ever, ah...”

He looks up as he trails off; Bill’s face is a picture of confusion. Then he seems to get it.

“Oh, uh,” he says, looking away. “No, I mean. I think he might have wanted that? But I’m, I’m not—”

Hollis nods vaguely. _It doesn’t matter,_ he wants to say, _I just wanted to know how much of a mess you’re going to be,_ but he can see the answer in front of him: an awful one. It doesn’t need to have been like _that._

“Sometimes I wish I...” Bill says, then resettles himself in the chair, restless. He ends up leaning forward over his knees, reaching one hand out as if to touch the edge of the table. It’s all just useless, wasted motion. “I’ve always just wanted him to be happy. Now...”

Now nothing. Now it’s done.

Hollis sighs; gets up to re-wet one of the rags, arrange it across Byron’s throat where the fever is worst, heat rising from rent skin. It’s hard to get it where it needs to be, with all of the rope lashing him down.

Then a rustling from the next room, and Sally leans her head in, one hand on the doorframe like she’d had to stop from a dead run. She’s a little breathless. 

“Bill, honey?” she says, all cautious gentleness. “On the radio. You’ll want to hear this.”

*


End file.
